Joey Logano Wins Talladega, Kevin Harvick Starts Questionable Wreck

For such an unpredictable race, Talladega races are generally pretty easy to telegraph: The field runs together under green with interruptions for one or two-car wrecks for about 150 laps with two or three dominant drivers leading most of the way, a few underdogs get credit for running in the top five early on, then a big wreck cuts the field in half, there's a few late restarts, and someone that nobody expects, but that everybody agrees was "Running well all day", pulls away to win by about a car length and a half.

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The narrative was on pace for most of the race. There were very few yellows, just two in regulation, and with all but one of the Chasers still running in the lead pack on the single green-white-checkered restart, it was clear that a wild restart was going to decide who would win the race, and assumed that at some point on the last lap a few cars will get caught up in a wreck. Denny Hamlin's race was essentially over already as he sat four laps off the lead lap because of an earlier issue with a roof hatch that wouldn't stay shut, but with nine of the remaining Chase drivers just a few positions from being either in or out of the 8th-place cutoff and Dale Earnhardt Jr. close enough to the front to win what was for him a must-win, NASCAR's ideal in-or-out scenario that could've changed six times on those last two laps had been set up.

Then, a mess. First there was a called-off restart, not counted as an attempt at finishing the race under green and thus not ending the race on the series's new one-GWC-attempt-at-plate-tracks rule, resulting from spinning cars in the trioval just as the leaders had exited the restart zone. Joe Logano lead Dale Earnhardt Jr. as the field lined up again, and this time the leaders made it all the way to the entrance of turn 1 before the yellow was waved, this time for a massive pile-up at the same part of the track. Earnhardt appeared to have taken the lead right just after the incident broke out and just before the caution was officially thrown, potentially giving him a win and saving his season that would otherwise have ended there, but on review, Logano was named the winner. Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin and Ryan Newman joined Earnhardt Jr. among the eliminated, leaving Joey Logano, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick alive in the Chase for the Sprint Cup as the round-of-four begins. The story doesn't end there, however.

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Harvick's fellow drivers have been openly suspicious about the final wreck, above via the NBC Sports Network. The reigning champion had been struggling with power issues for the entire final stint of the race and would likely have fallen back and been eliminated from contention had the restart and final two laps gone on as planned, so it was certainly in his best interest that the field wrecked right after the green flag fell. His falling back on the restart, then, isn't entirely suspicious, but it seems to an outside observer that the contact with the #6 Ford of Trevor Bayne could've been avoided entirely, almost as if Harvick had turned right into him. No matter the reasoning for the wreck, it left Harvick still in, directly stopped Earnhardt from having a chance to win and get in, and indirectly stopped Newman and Denny Hamlin from having their shot at the eighth and final spot in the next roudn of the Chase.

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Harvick's radio chatter, also above via the NBC Sports Network, isn't exceptionally suspicious in the way Michael Waltrip Racing's famous "Itchy arm" comments that telegraphed an intentional wreck to save a season were two years ago. However, it does confirm that Harvick's team were desperate, and that Harvick was encouraged to block as many drivers as possible to keep his season alive. Ryan Newman, Matt Kenseth, Denny Hamlin (Notably, three of the four drivers left cut after the incident) and David Gilliland (Notably, an entirely unrelated third party) all either implied or outright accused Harvick of wrongdoing already, but NASCAR's Mike Helton was quoted as saying that NASCAR" "[Does not] see anything there that is suspect so far".

Whether there was a team-given to start a wreck or it was of Harvick's own voilition, if NASCAR finds it to be intentional later in the week, the precedent of the 2013 MWR scandal is that the Chase lineup will be adjusted to remove Harvick and insert one or more than one of the drivers he had eliminated instead.

Given that this is the third example of questionable incidents on the last laps of elimination races, one has to wonder if this sort of championship format where drivers are often faced with the question of do something illegal or lose a shot at a title encourages incidents like this. Only time will tell if another shows up in the last two rounds of the Chase, the first of which runs for three weeks and starts next weekend at Martinsville. With wins in four of the six Chase races already under his belt, 2015 Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano is surely the favorite to win it all with one more elimination and one defining championship race awaiting him.

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